


A man out of time

by hateconqsall



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Body Dysphoria, Codependency, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-07-13 12:14:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16017707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hateconqsall/pseuds/hateconqsall
Summary: The thoughts of Steve Rogers, before and after the jump.





	A man out of time

  
  
  


It hadn’t always been like this. When Steve first received the serum, he had been ecstatic. After all, who else could say they had the strong body they’d always dreamed of when trapped in bed with one illness or another?

 

But (and wasn’t there always a but) he’s now a giant, over towering everybody, clumsy in this abnormal body. He avoids looking in mirrors, because he knows he’ll only ever see a stranger blinking back.

 

The body’s useful just as it was made to be, he manages to save Bucky from imminent death (and for that he’ll be ever so grateful to Dr. Erskine), and along with him 400 other men. After that successful rescue he gathers a team and together they conquer Hydra bases one after another.

 

He shoves his dislike of his body to the back of his mind, how can he focus on that when he has bigger things to worry about? Bucky loves him just as he did when they were in a small apartment in Brooklyn, all gangly limbs and trying to survive the next winter. So he carries on, he’s Captain America, the hope and saviour for the civilians back home.

 

Then Bucky falls, and his life cracks into a million pieces. How could he not have saved the one man who meant the most to him? The one man, who had the option to go back home after being a POW, but no, he decided to follow Steve - _ ’into the jaws of death’ _ \- and that’s what got him killed. Bucky could have been sound and safe in Brooklyn, he could’ve persuaded him into staying,  _ why didn’t he _ ? (And it’ll kill him, when nearly a century later, Bucky falls after him and saves him.) 

 

A weeks later, when he’s cornered in the Valkyrie, with the only option to sink it and him along with it. He could’ve tried, maybe he would’ve been able to escape just before the Valkyrie sinks, but he can’t bear the thought of returning home, because his true home, the one constant thing in his life is no longer by his side, and how can he return to Brooklyn without him? So he surrenders to the freezing ice, 

 

_ -oh, so cold… the burning sensations start in his toes and climb it’s way up to his thighs and oh he can’t move, can’t feel his toes, so he lays there as the excruciating pain eats away at his fingers and travels up his neck and- _

 

safe in the knowledge that his death will save thousands of lives and hopes that he’ll finally rejoin his best pal in death. After all Bucky froze to death, Bucky didn’t get to have a proper burial, what gives him the right to have any different?

* * *

The first thought he has when he awakes in a new, strange world, is that if he survived seventy years under the ice, he could’ve survived jumping after Bucky. But he can’t focus on those thoughts, not when he has to figure out what the hell's going on.

 

Everyone he ever knew is dead, resting six feet under. Everybody except Peggy, he finds out. But how can he visit her when he saw her just under a month ago; young, vibrant with danger flowing through her veins? Seeing her now, old and having lived a full life, would only finalize the deal that his world had truly passed on and he was stuck here, with no way back home. 

 

When the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D comes to him with a mission he accepts, and so he jumps into another war with new teammates. Seeing the younger Stark is a punch in the gut, for he looks so similar to Howard but is so different. Soon enough, he finds out the reason for Stark’s bitterness: Howard had turned sullen and stony after Steve’s jump into the ice; unknowingly casting aside his only son as he continuously searched for Captain America.

 

But they slowly come over their differences, and are able to work together as a team in the Avengers, alongside two assassins -one who reminds him of Peggy, the only female in a team of males and still able to kick ass better than any of them- a Norse God (he doesn’t want to even start wrapping his mind around that concept) and the Hulk.

 

Here he is now stuck in this modernized world with no way to adapt but to accept it, (a world, he never lets himself forget, that Bucky would’ve loved, he can only imagine his brown eyes wide with awe, a bright grin upon his lips as he places a soft kiss on Steve’s lips,  _ ‘Where we going, Buck?’ ‘To the future.’ _ ) and so he survives in this world without Bucky, without his comrades, left with a world and a team who only ever learned about Captain America and do not know the first thing about Steve Rogers. Truly, a man out of time.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if you can think of a better summary or title :-)


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